Jewish Tradition
Since before 3925 AM (165 AD), years in the Hebrew calendar have been counted from the Creation year based on the calculation in the Seder Olam Rabbah of Rabbi Jose ben Halafta in about 160 AD. By his calculation, based on the Masoretic Text, Adam was created in 3760 BC. However, Halafta's dating was not universally accepted by all Jewish communities. Even in 1000 AD, the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni mentioned three different epochs used by various Jewish communities being one, two, or three years later than the modern epoch. In 1178 AD, Maimonides included all the rules for the calculated calendar and their scriptural basis, including the modern epochal year in his work, Mishneh Torah.
Today, the rules detailed in Maimonides' code are those generally used by Jewish communities throughout the world.
Read more about this topic: Anno Mundi
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or tradition:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“I allude to these facts to show that, so far from the Supper being a tradition in which men are fully agreed, there has always been the widest room for difference of opinion upon this particular. Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I was led to the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples; and further, to the opinion that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we do.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)